 | Marginson, S., Murphy, P. & Peters, M., Imagination: Three Models of Imagination in the Age of the Knowledge Economy, (Peter Lang) 2010Advancement in the arts and sciences is a primary driver of economic production and social policy in post-industrial societies. Imagination steps back and asks 'what advances the arts and sciences?' This book explores the collective, social and global dimension of human imagining-and the ambivalent relationship of social institutions, including universities, schools, economies, media and culture industries, to the collective imagination. Basic discovery requires high levels of creative thinking: Imagination looks at the social conditions that make path-breaking thought possible on a large scale. It examines the role of aesthetic, pictorial, digital, paradoxical and other imaginative styles of thinking, and the times and places in which such styles become socially prominent and a significant force in economic and cultural production. It looks at successful societies as they are approaching their peak, when new ideas are driving them forward. |
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 | Farquhar, Sandy, Ricoeur, Identity and Early Childhood, (Rowman and Littlefield) 2010Early childhood education in Western society has come under increasing scrutiny by governments that see early education as an important factor in economic growth and development. Thus, social traditions in the field are increasingly giving way to an intensified focus on marketization and regulation, but with a corresponding diminishing concern for ethics and social participation. Drawing on the work of contemporary French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, Sandy Farquhar analyzes the problematic way in which we become who we are and the discourse that surrounds that learning. The book explores the ethical basis of identity formation in early childhood education and seeks fresh alternatives to commonly accepted perspectives on social policy, education, and the nature of our 'selves.' Farquhar uses Aotearoa New Zealand bicultural curriculum and policy context as examples for developing the theme of curriculum as a contest of ideas and a powerful form of resistance. Promoting the importance of narrative in understanding identity formation, the book elaborates on contemporary themes of difference, ethics, and social justice, calling for a revitalized sense of liberalism and social democracy. |
 | Georgina Stewart, Good Science? The Growing Gap between Power and Education, (Sense Publishers) 2010This work uses narrative research, including accounts of personal experiences, to explore the margins of science and ethics. Boundaries between science and other cultural and disciplinary forms of knowledge are illuminated through studying the inter-relationships between identity, knowledge and power, using narratives both in and as a form of philosophical reflection on educational practice. The story centres on a contemporary real-world context of minority-language science education, showing how this fits into longstanding trans-disciplinary intercultural debates about the nature of science and of knowledge in general. The narrative form is used to bridge and interweave the multiple discourses influencing both the real-world context and the approach to its investigation. This analysis clarifies the linkages between paradigms of critical postcolonial research and post-positivist epistemology, and illustrates how social science, including educational research, may use science and technology to assist, rather than delimit, our understanding of complex human phenomena such as education, culture, language and science. Those interested in reading this book will include critical scholars, educators and practitioners of indigenous knowledge, critical sociolinguistics and science and multicultural education. |
 | White, E.J. & Johansson, E., Educational research with our youngest: Voices of infants and toddlers, (Springer) 2011Interpreting the voices of under three year olds is central to early childhood education. Yet entering into their life-worlds is fraught with challenges and unrealised possibilities. This ground-breaking book generates a dialogue about the multiple ways researchers have exploited a range of methods for approaching, accessing, understanding and interpreting infant voice. Each chapter explores the kinds of ethical considerations and dilemmas that may arise in this process. The book itself represents a chorus of international voices (researchers, children, teachers and parents), all adding to a discussion about various circumstances, dilemmas and possibilities involved in doing research with our youngest. This book is an essential read for researchers and teachers alike who seek to 'listen' and 'see' very young children with fresh ears and eyes. http://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/book/978-94-007-2393-1 |
 | Roberts, P., Paulo Freire in the 21st Century: Education, Dialogue, and Transformation, (Paradigm) 2010The book explores the implications of Freirean theory for educational practice and shows how Freire can be helpful in bridging different genres and traditions. It addresses a number of themes, questions, and issues that have received relatively little attention to date, including Freire’s conception of the critical intellectual, Freire and the problem of defining literacy, and the possibility of a Freirean response to debates over political correctness. Roberts also puts Freire’s ideas into conversation with writers seldom considered by other Freirean scholars: Israel Scheffler, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Hermann Hesse, among others. This book makes a distinctive contribution to the international literature on Freire’s work. http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=215151 |
 | Roberts, P., From West to East and Back Again An Educational Reading of Hermann Hesse’s Later Work, (Sense Publishers) 2012Of all the great Western novelists of the twentieth century, the German writer Hermann Hesse is arguably one of the most important for educationists. Paying particular attention to Hesse’s last novel, The Glass Bead Game, and its immediate predecessor, The Journey to the East, this book suggests that Hesse was a man of the West who turned to the idea of ‘the East’ in seeking to understand himself and his society. From these later texts a rich, complex theory of educational transformation emerges. From West to East and Back Again examines the role of dialogue and uncertainty in the transformative process, considers utopian and ritualistic elements in Hesse’s work, and explores the notion of education serving as a bridge between life and death. Hesse’s novels address philosophical themes and questions of enduring significance, and this book will appeal to all who share an interest in human striving and growth. |
 | Roberts, P. & Peters, M.A., Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia, (Lexington Books) 2013Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia provides a fresh examination of utopia and education. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on literature and the visual arts as well as traditional non-fiction sources, the authors explore utopia not as a model of social perfection but as the active, imaginative building of better worlds. Utopian questions, they argue, lie at the heart of education, and addressing such questions demands attention not just to matters of theoretical principle but to the particulars of everyday life and experience. Taking utopia seriously in educational thought also involves a consideration of that which is dystopian. Utopia, this book suggests, is not something that is fixed, final, or ever fully realized; instead, it must be constantly recreated, and education, as an ongoing process of reflection, action, and transformation, has a central role to play in this process. |
 | Peters, Michael A., Education, Science and Knowledge Capitalism: Creativity and the Promise of Openness, (Peter Lang) 2013We live in the age of global science - but not, primarily, in the sense of 'universal knowledge' that has characterized the liberal metanarrative of 'free' science and the 'free society' since its early development in the Enlightenment. Today, an economic logic links science to national economic policy, while globalized multinational science dominates an environment where quality assurance replaces truth as the new regulative ideal. This book examines the nature of educational and science-based capitalism in its cybernetic, knowledge, algorithmic and bioinformational forms before turning to the emergence of the global science system and the promise of openness in the growth of international research collaboration, the development of the global knowledge commons and the rise of the open science economy. Education, Science and Knowledge Capitalism explores the nature of cognitive capitalism, the emerging mode of social production for public education and science and its promise for the democratization of knowledge. |
 | Peters, Michael A. & J. G. York, Leo Strauss, Education, and Political Thought, (Rowman and Littlefield.) 2011This collection by some of the leading scholars of Strauss' work is the first devoted to Strauss' thought regarding education. It seeks to address his conception of education as it applies to a range of his most important concepts, such as his views on the importance of revelation, his critique of modern democracy, and the importance of modern classical education. This book attempts to maintain traditional scholarly standards in the hope of approaching both Strauss and his work in a dispassionate and objective manner. It contains both biographical as well as scholarly chapters aimed first and foremost at understanding the corpus of Strauss' work and also his significance as an educational thinker. |
 | Peters, M.A. and Bulut, E., Cognitive Capitalism, Education and the Question of Immaterial Labor, (Peter Lang: New York) 2011Cognitive capitalism – sometimes referred to as ‘third capitalism,’ after mercantilism and industrial capitalism – is an increasingly significant theory, given its focus on the socio-economic changes caused by Internet and Web 2.0 technologies that have transformed the mode of production and the nature of labor. The theory of cognitive capitalism has its origins in French and Italian thinkers, particularly Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’sCapitalism and Schizophrenia, Michel Foucault’s work on the birth of biopower and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire and Multitude, as well as the Italian Autonomist Marxist movement that had its origins in the Italian operaismo (workerism) of the 1960s. In this collection, leading international scholars explore the significance of cognitive capitalism for education, especially focusing on the question of digital labor. http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Capitalism-Education-Digital-Labor/dp/1433109816 |
 | Peters, M.A., Neoliberalism and After? Education, Social Policy and the Crisis of Capitalism, (Peter Lang) 2011The era that began with the election of the Thatcher and Reagan governments has been dominated by contemporary forms of neoliberalism-based market fundamentalism, globalization as world economic integration and the ideology of «free trade,» and an attack on «big» government and social welfare. This book is a historical and theoretical investigation of contemporary neoliberalism in relation to education policy and its rollback of the Keynesian welfare state. It argues that education is the basis of an open society and is a social welfare right in the merging knowledge economy. Drawing on the theoretical lens of Michel Foucault's work on governmentality understood as a form of radical political economy, the book explores and critiques neoliberalism as the ruling ideological consensus. It also questions whether and to what extent its influence will continue, in the face of the destabilization of markets that followed the financial crisis and the global recession that began in 2007, in the advanced liberal economies of the United States and the European Union. |
 | Grierson, E.M. & Brearley, L, Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices, (Sense Publishers: Rotterdam) 2009Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices is an innovative set of essays that grows out of active engagement with arts practice, pedagogy and research. The collection presents a selection of arts-based research projects, their methodologies, practices and guiding philosophies, and throws new light on a range of issues that bring artists, designers, and performers into conversation with one another. The collection weaves together theoretical and applied dimensions of creative arts research. Following Martin Heidegger, the lead authors, Elizabeth Grierson and Laura Brearley situate the text through consideration of ways of framing, knowing and being, looking and listening, analysing, being-with, proposing, acting and reflecting, constructing, performing, deconstructing, and learning. Heidegger’s notion of “gathering” and his proposition, “Questioning builds a way ... the way is one of thinking” provides the means to link the different chapters. This wide-ranging metaphoric device allows the authors to emphasise a set of fundamental questions concerning epistemologies, ways of knowing, and ontologies, ways of being, and the relations between the two. Their book opens a conceptual space to recognise the diversity of practices that count as creative arts research. |